GST relief for textiles, goods movement to get smoother

​​In order to bring relief to the farming sector, the rate for agriculture services linked to post-harvest and storage has been reduced to 12% from 18%. The Fifa youth World Cup, being held in India, has been exempted from GST, finance minister Arun Jaitley said.TNN | Updated: August 06, 2017, 10:49 IST

NEW DELHI: The GST Council revised rates on 19 services on Saturday, including reducing the job work rate in the textiles sector to 5% from 18%, as finance minister Arun Jaitley appealed to businesses to pass on the benefits of the tax reform measure.

The reduction in the rate of job work will be applicable across the entire textile chain and takes care of the concerns of the industry which has been pushing for reducing the rate for any job work linked to knitting, dyeing, embroidery, printing, washing, stitching, ironing and others.

The council, in its 20th meeting in the capital, also approved the e-way bill rules to ensure seamless movement of goods. The rules specify pre-registration of all goods worth over Rs 50,000 before they are moved for sale beyond 10km. It will not be applicable for exempted goods and the unified e-way rules are likely to be in place by October 1.

This will help end inspector raj as the process would largely be driven by technology. “The Council decided to implement e-way bill across the country.... There will be no check posts and the entire process will be technology driven,” Jaitley said after the meeting of the panel.

The FM said new registrations under GST has gone up to 15.67 lakh and 71 lakh state and central taxpayers have migrated to the new system. He said the figures were satisfactory.

The increase in the new registrations comes as a boost for the government which had been eyeing a widening of the tax base. The GST Council also lowered the rate on some tractor parts to 18% from 28%. The council is also likely to examine whether contracts linked to irrigation can be bought down to 5%.

Jaitley said the council discussed the anti-profiteering issue and would launch a campaign on it to inform the consumer about the impact of GST.

“Some industries are not giving benefit of input tax credit. We want market mechanism to compel them to pass on the benefit,” Jaitley said.

As a first, state-level screening committees will be set up along with a panel at the Centre and the FM said it would act as a “deterrent”.

In order to bring relief to the farming sector, the rate for agriculture services linked to post-harvest and storage has been reduced to 12% from 18%.

Entry to Planetarium will now attract 18% rate, lower than the previous 28%. For cab-renting services, the rate will be 12% if there is no input tax credit. For those involved in printing books and newspaper, the GST rate will be 5% if they use their own paper and if the paper is supplied by the printer outside, it will be 12% with input tax credit.

The next meet of the council will be on September 9. “As expected, the e-way bill rules have been approved, though the date from when they will become effective has not been announced. However, for real benefit of GST to be realised, it is important that supply chain bottlenecks are reduced,” said Pratik Jain, partner and leader indirect tax at consulting firm PwC.